About Those 87 Thousand Web Accessible Printers

Gizmodo is reporting today that there are some 86 thousand HP printers which can be accessed from anywhere in the world by anyone who knows the URL.

This is a really funny story in that it shows just how many people didn't think to use adequate security (including some CS depts at universities) when they enabled the web access options for their printers.

But it's really not as funny as it first appears. I took a close look at the Google search results which show the list of accessible printers. Click through to the second page and suddenly the list will end after 13 links. So far as I can tell that figure of 86,700 accessible printers is bogus. It's caused by some type of bug in the search result counter.

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."

There are several hundred webcams too. But the site set up to see them is either getting hammered or my crap PC can’t handle it. At least two of the webcams had been secured by the time I tried to view them.